Reading my mind...

Srivatsa read 4 lines of my handwriting, and wrote down 20 lines about my personality.

Absolutely UNREAL!!! 95% of it was correct. Kudos to him.

But he missed one thing. I hate someone reading my mind or my thoughts. I'm never doing this again...

Hostel Days - 1 - The Boys Hostel

The Boys Hostel. Men's Hostel... whatever... Its still the same.

We might go from boyz-2-men, but that doesn't change much. This ones about the physical environment we live in - The Boys Hostel.

A guy's room is typically unclean. A guy's hostel room, even more so! Sounds cliched, but is cliched for a reason. The rooms really are quite unclean. Typically a 10 ft x10 ft room, a single bed, almirah, a wooden study table and 2 chairs (one to sit on, the other to dry clothes).

Typical situation: 

Bed covered by bedsheet, has a customized pillow (this is one thing guys are extremely passionate about!), a crumpled 'chaddar' thats never folded back after the night, and simply lies around like that. 

The table seldom has a table cover (unless the boy has an over-protective mother). It houses the laptop, 2.1 surround speakers (sounds unaffordable to a student studying on a student loan, but isn't), a pen-stand, water bottles, cell phone, some books and other peripheral junk like half-used medicine strips, scraps of paper with information scribbled on them, old case study papers, some more books, receipts from last months shopping trip to the city, a movie ticket etc.

One chair is always with the table, the other has small items like UGs, handkerchiefs, socks etc. drying on it. 

The almirah is STASHED! In the most disorderly fashion imaginable, the various compartments contain clothes (ironed and unironed together), UGs, sweaters and thick 'chaddars' for the winter, waterproofs, footwear, suits and formal wear and at least 2 large empty suitcases/strolley bags which were brought along when the person first came here.

Usually 1 small white board contains scraps of writing from the past year. A few assorted pictures. Somehow, probably cause we're away from home, all the boys (barring the atheists) have a couple of frames of whichever god they believe in. Beside that are pictures of family/wife/girlfriend (or sometimes even a picture of close friends a la Dil Chahta Hai).

Thats about the room. Now the hostel in general. The toilets are... well... atrocious. Often they look and feel like Railway station 2nd class waiting room washrooms. They don't smell like that though. Railway washrooms (and for that matter anything Railways) has this peculiar smell of metal. The corridors are generally clean, basically cause the college employs housekeeping staff. The hostel has a central open air enclosed space, converted into anything from Basketball courts, paved courts to flower beds. These are the best source of entertainment for the denizens. There is also a 'common room'. I don't know why it is called that. Just feel it is a rather unimaginative name for a room. It houses a TV, some TT tables or carrom boards, and some broken chairs. Here, it also houses some broken printers.

The above despicable description isn't common for all though. There are some guys who are worse (that is really possible!), and some who are much better. But this kind of community housing leads to an odd bonding among its denizens. Thats lacking in my block cause the seniors living here before pretty much kept to themselves, and never bonded with us juniors.

But B-Block 2nd floor does have some interesting seniors now. Theres me, Rohit 'NoWay' Patil, Atul 'A-Pod' Poddar, and the inimitable Vikrant Bhalla. Were the craziest among the others. The bathroom has some really weird plumbing; every time anyone turns on the cold water tap, all 3 bathrooms get only cold water. And thats extremely annoying when you are bathing against time in the winters! Then me, Bhalla and Patil try and go one-up on each other in coming up with the most exotic curses for the ass who did it. Other than that, we also indulge in playing odd songs in tandem, screaming randomly at each other, exchanging notes on movies and songs and also waking each other for lectures.

Okay, thats about it. I'm off to clean up my room and get my clothes from the washing machine. Need to dry them... on the chair.

Hostel days

I've completed a year at IIM-I, living in a hostel for the first time, and now the new batch of first year students has joined us. Looking at their naive reactions this new life, I feel I have gained some perspective over the past year.

This is the first in a series of posts where I pen down my views on campus life, hostel living and its facets. Some of it may be generalised to any kind of hostelery, while some might be specific to my dwellings here. All of it, though, is entirely my personal opinion. Judge me if you must...

Candid thoughts (someone else's) on Mumbai

Not too often does one get to read the first-hand experience of someone new to Mumbai living in the city in the peak of the monsoon mayhem (which visitors hate the most).

Its candid, very well written, and... well, quite insightful... so here goes... http://ohnewoerter.blogspot.com/2009/07/statutory-warning-this-narration-is.html

The Real MBA degree... Please stand up!

Its heartening to read http://careers360.in/lead-story/iipm---best-only-in-claims.html

Finally, someone stood up and tried to expose the wildly innacurate and falsified claims and the media's complicity with Arin-DUM Chaudhary and his Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM). The name itself reeks of 'farzi'-ness. 'Planning'?? What was he thinking???

Nevertheless, no point in going on-and-on about how fake are his placement figures, how prepsterous are the average salaries, how innacurate are his claims of internation faculty participation and how his internation tie-ups and partner colleges are nothing but unaccredited 3rd rate colleges in their own countries. Its all there in that report.

The real question that begs to be answered is what is this mad rush for an MBA degree? And at what cost, and I i'm not even thinking monetary.

Being inside a premier B-school for about a year now, I can vouch for how hyped and overpublicised an MBA degree is. And no offences to people who don't make it to the top rung of colleges - its just not worth it going to an IIPM just because one sees green manna at the end of 2 years...

And I'll give you my reasons why... Firstly, I have learnt more outside the classroom at IIM Indore than I have ever learned inside a classroom. Classroom education can be replicated.. even duplicated. But what about the outside experience?

The sheer pressure of having to compete with the top 1% of the country's youth itself makes you raise your game several levels up. Organizing events with a budget of more than 2 lack, restructuring a committee by introducing best practices and processes, trying to gather common funds from 240 unwilling and sharply cunning people, keeping people motivated to do non-academic tasks in the face of adverse academic conditions, two months at a premier international bank, interacting on a first name basis with alumni who are CFOs and Country Heads running large organization... these are the things what a manager needs to learn to do!

A Kotler or a Damodaran can teach you only so much; but what about all the above aspects. Zig Ziglar never can tell you how to sell a concept where people have to pay INR 1000 as contribution for a party they can't attend. Porter can never envisage the forces at play when one has to design events that outsmart competitor colleges with better resources. Damodaran can only give you the best D-E ratio for a large project, but can he teach you how to raise 35 lack in funding for an internal event, with traditionally low sponsorship and rather low turnout, with absolutely no equity and debt?

Havin worked for about 24 months totally, at 2 widely different corporates, I have realized one thing. Give me 4 months at absolutely ANY job, and I can learn it! It is the 'other' experience that a top-rung B-School provides that outscores anything that an IIPM or other tier - 4/5 college can provide.

And secondly, an MBA isn't the ultimate quest everyone must aspire for. Over the past year, I have seen people do well at things they like to do, with or without an MBA. Trust me, you are better off doing something you like and are good at, rather than joining a B-School (be it any) simply because you've heard that MBA are paid monstrous salaries for incredibly simple work. Both can't be true together. And what about satisfaction? Whats the point of doing drudgery for 50 lack a year, when your heart is somewhere else, and the mind alltogether elsewhere?

'De Dhakka' is a rip off too!!!

Not sure who, but someone advised me to watch the marathi movie 'De Dhakka'.

And, well, I did take the risk of watching it.

And 30 mins into the movie I had a feeling its ripped off from 'Little Miss Sunshine'. And watdyaknow, I was right!!!

Loose ends

Just saw this movie - "Vickie Cristina Barcelona".

Beautiful, albeit... ummm... slightly weird, movie this.

But I have noticed that I get this odd uneasy feeling, an uncommon feeling of haplessness when I see movies like VCB or read books like "English, August"... storylines that talk about the hollowness of many of our lives's pursuits... of the continous search with no end in sight... loose ends...

Wonder why... not sure...